


The First Time She Said His Name...

by QueenoftheHobbits



Series: OTP: Keep Your Hat On... [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, F/M, Guilt, Names, PTSD, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenoftheHobbits/pseuds/QueenoftheHobbits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'd never called him by his real name before...not in all the years he knew her...not before her death...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Time She Said His Name...

Jeff. It wasn't something he heard often. Joker? Sure, but Jeff? Only his parents called him that. So you can probably see why hearing his real name from his commander was somewhat terrifying. It wasn’t that he thought Evelyn Shepard was going to swoop down and shoot him with her favourite shotgun, but that it was said so quietly that he almost didn’t hear it. In years of friendship under her command...in years of being around her he’d never heard her say his name and in this case he thought he’d imagined it, until the voice came again. 

“Jeff...” It was weak. Broken. It had him spinning his chair around in concern to see her. Her usually olive skin looked paler whether from the lighting of the cockpit or just some worry far too close to home, the scars caused by Cerberus were slowly fading, but glowed steadily still as if enjoying the obvious pain she was in. 

It wasn’t like seeing her come back with a broken arm or a shot to the leg...it was worse. There was something utterly defeated about the way she held herself. She was vulnerable, only a pair of sleeping shorts and a vest top between skin and everything else...whatever sarcastic quip about spying on him may have been on his tongue died rather fast. 

“Commander?” He wanted to get up. He wanted to shake her out of that terrified stare...but he’d rather not break his own arm in the process. He tried again.

“Shepard?” She still stared blankly ahead, it was like she hadn’t heard him, like she was lost. Lost in a memory and he had no doubt about which one. “Evie?!” She jumped out of her stupor, he’d never truly yelled at her like that. He wasn’t in the habit of raising his voice, more likely lowering it for a snarky comment. 

“What’s wrong...?” He didn’t know why he asked. He could practically see the answer in her eyes. Death. Space. Freezing. No breath. **Death.**

His green eyes trailed after her tiny form as she padded her way to the co-pilots seat. For such a short woman you wouldn’t think Shepard had much physical presence, but she always seemed to have a way of making herself seem bigger...making herself noticeable, and if she didn’t? she’d trick you and probably knee you in balls. She looked, however, even smaller in that chair, knees pulled up and arms wrapped around them as she stared out at the vast blackness before the two of them...before shifting those eyes to his. He wasn’t sure if they were brown, green or blue...hazel may have been the correct word. She was shaking. 

“I died...I died...and-” A hitch in her throat stopped her words and he felt a similar blocked feeling in his own. Like a piece of Gardner’s ration bar stuck in his oesophagus . He was there, he’d seen her fade away into the dark...the dark he was supposed to protect her from. The dark he’d failed to keep her from. 

He stayed silent. What could he say ‘Sorry,I got you killed?’ ‘Sorry, that i’m such a massive screw up that you died?!’. Sorry wasn’t good enough, not when you’re the reason someone dies. He spent 2 years wallowing over that. Letting it fester like an open wound, until all his dreams were nightmares and all his thoughts turned to Shepard struggling in the vacuum of space. Those last moments were burned into his brain, it felt worse than the broken wrist he’d sustained. She should have left him...should have left his useless ass behind. He wasn’t anything without the Normandy, but Evelyn Shepard? She was something. She was just too damn good to let the cripple die. Too damn good. His thoughts were bitter and he felt like those 2 years were starting all over again. The brass would come in a minute to interrogate him and blame him without blaming him for her death...it would all start again in a cycle. 

“...the last thing I saw...the last thing I looked at before I died...was you, Jeff...” She looked distraught, she was distraught. She could still feel the icy grip around her, the panic at her suit failing... 

Joker’s hackles raised. She thought he wanted to see her die? She didn’t want to see his face? Yeah, well he’d have rather seen a fluffy bunny and rainbow. “Yeah. Well i’m sorry you had to see my ugly ass face.” The harsh words came from his guilt. The festering wound that needed opening up and fixing from the inside out. 

“Jeff..” She was blinking back tears. She was Commander Shepard. She couldn’t cry...she couldn’t cry over this. Joker was Joker...she knew he was being defensive, but it hurt so much. Evelyn thought they’d gotten past the defensive anger a good few months into the SR-1. 

“What? Going to finally tell me it was my fault? Cause I know, Commander! I know _I_ killed you, Evie! I lived with that for 2 years!” He ripped the hat off of his head, a head pushing through the brown hair and tugging at it as if it would remove the memories. 

“Joker!” He whipped his head up at her commanding voice. It was the one she reserved for particularly stubborn recruits and team members. But not him...even in the beginning she’d been unusually relaxed and informal with him. She’d been calm and patient. “You did _not_ kill me...don’t you dare say that...I was glad...I was glad that the last thing I saw was your face...I was glad that I knew you were okay...that I just got to see you one last time...I was glad...” His face was the only part of her nightmares that didn’t scare her. Seeing him was a blessing, even if the pain he was feeling at the time was horrific. She’d been glad to die with the face of a close friend...of a person she cared and dare she say loved in her mind...because had she died back on the streets of Earth the last thing she would have seen would have been a filthy gutter. 

“Evie...” Any anger left him immediately, a wave of grief and satisfaction washed over him. An odd mix; her death mixed with the pride of knowing she was happy to see his face as she passed...it made him want to throw up that he felt like that. 

“I was glad, Jeff” It was the first time she’d ever called him by his first name. It was the first time they’d had any sort of serious conversation about her death...about what happened in the run up to her death...about their friendship. About his guilt. But she said his name and he wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a curse, dragging him deeper and deeper into her like brushing waves of an ocean. He was stranded in the ocean and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to sink or swim.


End file.
